BIPV panels covering an entire building in Taiwan

Dutch architectural firm MVRDV has designed and deployed a building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system on a building owned by Taiwan’s state-owned power utility Taipower.

“We cladded the entire façade with photovoltaics, maximizing the energy gains to make it not only self-sustainable, for its own usage, but also allowing the building to become a tool of energy production, exporting electricity to the rest of the grid,” said MVRDV founding partner Winy Maas.

The Sun Rock building is located at the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, near Taichung, and its primary purpose is for the storage and maintenance of sustainable energy equipment. “The site for Taipower’s new facility receives a significant amount of solar exposure throughout the year, and so the rounded shape of Sun Rock is designed to maximize how much of that sunlight can be harnessed for energy,” MVRDV said in a statement.

According to the company, the solar array is exposed to higher radiation on the southern side during the middle of the day, while electricity generation is maximized by the northern side in the mornings and evenings.

The BIPV system was built with a series of pleats that support photovoltaic panels and the modules mixed in with windows, where required, on their upper surface.

“The angle of these pleats is adjusted on all parts of the façade to maximize the energy-generating potential of the solar panels,” MVRDV explained. “As a result of these measures, the building can support at least 4,000 square meters of PV panels that would generate almost 1 million kilowatt-hours of clean energy per year.”

No more technical details on the project were disclosed.